LOVE AND HOPE / Pianoduo DUOR / Review

LOVE AND HOPE

Pianoduo DUOR

Singapore Conference Hall

Sunday (13 August 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 August 2023 with the title "Pianoduo DUOR delighted with popular favourites in four hands recital".

 

Ever since the Covid pandemic abated, there have been piano recitals galore from visiting international artists, but two pianos / four hands concerts are still a rarity. So credit goes to Bechstein Music World for presenting Pianoduo DUOR, formed by Japanese pianists Takashi Fujii and Yoshie Shiramizu who have been performing together since 2004. Their recital on two Bechstein grands was founded wholly on popular tunes and short pieces, but was a total treat.

 

Both halves of the concert opened with selections from Rachmaninov’s two piano suites. The familiar Romance from Suite No.2 was taken at a very leisurely tempo, allowing a gradual build-up of passion close to breaking point at its climax. Tears from Suite No.1 was built on just four descending notes, over which further coats of sound were layered, literally a flood of lacrimation.

 

Beautiful sonorities were coaxed from the well-matched pianos and when the duo converged on a single keyboard, their fine ensemble work became even more apparent. The four movements from Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No.1, a perennial favourite, had feeling and nuance. The flowing lyricism of Morning Mood was well contrasted with chordal grimness of The Death of Åse. Rhythmic lilt in Anitra’s Dance was also balanced by deliberate ungainliness in The Hall of the Mountain King, before closing in a relentless drive.  

 

Receiving its Singapore premiere was late Japanese contemporary composer Akira Miyoshi’s very attractive Cahier Sonore (Handbook of Notes), a neo-baroque suite comprising short dance movements not unlike those of Debussy’s Petite Suite or Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. The use of gentle dissonances and occasionally jazzy harmonies coloured the dreamy Prelude, playful Passepied, animated Courante and the Finale's perpetual motion. The central Romance was literally a rehash of the earlier Rachmaninov romance, but transformed with quirky harmonic twists.

 

The longest work on show was American composer John Musto’s highly effective transcription of Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. Besides barnstorming on the two pianos, this performance was also boosted by Fujii’s tap-dancing shoes taking the place of finger-snapping, a pair of police whistles, and the shouts of "Mambo"! during its most frenetic dance sequence. Fujii's loud and lusty cry received an equal and opposite response in Shiramizu's sultrily seductive one.    

Photo: Guan Ziwen / Bechstein Music World

 

Both halves closed with two Chopin hits, dressed up in fussy finery as to be almost comical caricatures. Waltz du Petit Chien was none other than the famous Minute Waltz, with the puppy going in circles chasing its own tail, but one will still marvel at Shiramizu’s technical mastery of descending thirds. Fantaisie-Impromptu was just as grandiloquent, and did anyone notice the sly quote from Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony?   

 

Fujii and Shiramizu’s two encores were just delightful. Debussy’s Clair de lune on two pianos and Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No.5 on one piano sent a well-filled house, occupied by many children, home on a happy note.